Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree!  In this episode Kelly Preece, Researcher Development Manager talks Dr. Heather Hind and Dr. Philippa Earle, who are doctoral graduates from English currently work as Digital Learning Developers in the College of Medicine and Health at the University of Exeter. 

Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses

Podcast transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter Doctoral College

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Hello, and a warm welcome to another episode of Beyond Your Research Degree.

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I'm Kelly Preece, the research development manager in the Doctoral College,

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and I'm continuing episodes on the theme of getting jobs and moving forward with your career.

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During COVID 19, by talking to actually in this episode, two of our doctoral graduates.

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So Dr Philippa Earle and Dr Heather Huind both of whom did their PhDs in English but are now working in professional

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services roles at the University of Exeter in roles that were created in response to the COVID 19 pandemic.

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So Heather and Philippa, are you happy to introduce yourselves? I'm Dr Heather Hind

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I did my PhD in English literature, specifically Victorian literature and things that the Victorians made out of human hair.

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And I finished in while I handed in in March 2020, just before the first lockdown's started and had my viva last year.

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And since then, I've been working for the university as a digital learning developer for the College of Medicine and Health.

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So I'm Dr Philippa Earle I finished my PhD at Exeter in.

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Summer of 2018. It seems a long time ago now. And my thesis was on John Milton.

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And I'm really interested in his material philosophy, which is commonly called monism.

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And so I've kind of been floating around since then, doing various things.

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I'd really like to get into academia. I really enjoy teaching.

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I have done some casual teaching since then to different roles at different universities,

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and I then came into doing this digital learning development role kind of last September.

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So I was kind of last minute recruits and it kind of slotted in working with Heather.

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That's fabulous. Like you say, probably it's useful just to start with, kind of back it up, back a little bit.

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What a digital learning developer is. And I think particularly as well how these roles have.

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It evolved because of the situation with the current pandemic.

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And so when they were first advertised, I think I applied last June,

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I think I started my application the week before my viva, and then I had the interview the week after my viva.

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Wow. Yes, it was the time. It was honestly really fortuitous for me as it worked out.

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But they were advertised as roles to support the shift to online teaching during the pandemic.

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And to think what the job description said.

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It said, you know, supporting teaching staff, troubleshooting online issues, helping to develop the virtual learning environment.

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ELE at Exeter. But it was it was relatively vague.

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I don't know if Philippa would agree, but it was, you know, relatively, you know, job speak sort of.

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These are all of the possible things that you might be asked to do. Vague.

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But as the role has gone on and we've been able to shape it to a certain extent to what sort of support our college needs.

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It's been a lot more about kind of project management, checking over modules and quality,

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assuring them for the online side of things to make sure that the students are properly supported.

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Have all the information they need,

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online seminars and lectures and things are running smoothly and that we're continually trying to make things better, innovate, use new digital tools.

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Yeah, I think I hadn't kind of anticipated quite how much I would learn, I suppose, because I was sort of thinking, well,

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we were both kind of chucked into the online teaching through the kind of teaching roles we were doing at the time last March.

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And I kind of needed something more stable. And these were full time roles, even though they're fixed term.

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And yeah, I think Heather and I kind of came at this from a very similar angle, really.

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We're both English PhD graduates. Both interested in it and going into academia and.

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Yeah. I suppose we kind of thought of this as a way of being sort of resourceful with the kind of options that are out there,

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but also having a bit more kind of job security. So, you know, I came to this role thinking, well,

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I can bring a little bit of my experience that I've had just from having to sort of fumble your way through and shove everything online last minute,

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but actually have just learnt so much. And yeah, as has Heather was saying, about kind of quality assurance, different digital tools and the options.

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And so actually, I'm I'm really pleased that I've managed to kind of get loads out of this and

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not just for kind of improving the quality of the teaching and the college,

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but also kind of my own understanding of pedagogy and the way that you can kind of support your own teaching with digital tools and what works.

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It's just been brilliant, really. Yeah, I think it's really interesting to hear you talk about it that way and also the you know,

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the the fact that it's fitting into a kind of an aim for an academic career path.

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And because it's it's giving you obviously it's giving you some job stability in the interim, but also,

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you know, a real a range of really specialist skills that as a result of the pandemic are going to be.

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You know, the way that education is going to change in that inevitably is going to be so highly valued.

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Moving forward. And I think also, yeah.

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Because there is just so much uncertainty. These were advertised as fixed term roles.

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And, you know, the university hasn't quite decided what direction they're going in yet, whether they're going to be renewed.

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So I think we're both trying to keep an open mind and think, well, this is kind of plan A.

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But equally, you know, we're quite happy doing these roles and then they're very valuable.

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So it's a good stepping stone, really. And, you know, it's always good to have a backup plan is knowing the market as it is.

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So it's giving us a really good insight into professional services and just the other side of things at the university.

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The university structure working within kind of lots of different teams, different, introduced to different kinds of management there.

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So, yeah, really good insight. And, you know, opening up kind of alternative possibilities, you know, if Plan A doesn't work out as wel